Women With - self-help for women?
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Self-help for women? It's a scream
A weekend in the country getting in touch with her inner woman didn't
sound scary, but when Genevieve Fox heard the group wail, it was time
to run
"You're on the bitches' team," said a woman wearing a pink T-shirt and
matching bandana, as she handed me my name badge (I'd given a false
name). "We'll take you to your bedroom."
I was shown up to my six-bed dormitory. My usher invited me to remove
my jewellery and watch, and to forgo make-up. After finding my "object
of comfort" (teddy bears had been suggested before we came), I waited
to be summoned. Ten minutes later, 30 wide-eyed women, clutching
cuddly toys and Linus blankets, trooped down a flagstone staircase, in
silence, and in single file, as instructed.
This isn't reality TV. Nor is it an open prison. It's called self-
development, a Woman Within Training weekend in a country house in
Dorset. I had driven there at 6pm on a Friday evening and, with
indecent haste, devoured a Snickers bar before getting out of the car,
not knowing whether starvation would be one of the tools used to prime
me for the catharsis that the weekend is designed to unleash.
At the top of the stairs, I left my bear. I couldn't face the
infantilism. The women were like Margaret Atwood's handmaidens:
obeisant, unnerving. Trooping to the refectory reminded me of fire
drills at boarding school. This time we were aged from 20 to 60 and
were beginning our descent into the flames of public confessional.
Thirty smiling staff members awaited us, flanking the room. Then came
the pep talk. "This is not a cult," said the Woman Within leader.
"This is not therapy." It is a personal development programme.
According to the organisation's website: "Woman Within Training will
take you on a journey - a descent - into yourself. Through this
descent you are given the opportunity to re-establish connection with
the part of yourself that intuitively knows - your ageless wisdom. It
provides an opportunity for you to reclaim a part of yourself that may
have been lost, stolen, forgotten or fragmented."
I had first heard about Woman Within after meeting two men who had
been on Warrior Weekends, run by the international Mankind Project, a
men's self-help group, which was formed in Wisconsin, the US, in 1987
and has spawned 27 centres worldwide. Woman Within is its sister
organisation.
At the centre, we were instructed first in personal-safety guidelines.
We were never to leave our group and had to be accompanied by a staff
member on trips to the loo. If we were suicidal, we must tell someone.
If someone tried to commit suicide, an ambulance would be called. Self-
harm and violence against others were off-limits. Wounds had to be
covered, to prevent the spread of HIV. These guidelines seemed
unnecessary. Only when the night's first ritual was over did I see
that they weren't.
At 10.30 we filed into the ornate ballroom. Thirty-five women, all
Woman Within "graduates" turned staff members, sat in a circle. We
formed a circle within. It was time for the confessional. Each woman
was invited to share her demons and tell us how she felt and who she
wanted to be, using an identical verbal template, which began: "As a
wounded animal, I am a . . . (anything from confident female to loving
mother).
" You filled in the blanks. The staff went first, all 35 of them,
passing a conch shell from woman to woman, then we followed.
An hour and a half later, I had "witnessed" the personal testimonies
of more than 60 women. It left me reeling: incest, rape, sexual abuse,
domestic violence, parental rejection, discomfort with femininity or
sexuality, marital conflict, self-loathing, terminal illness: all
human grief was here. But this was no Jerry Springer show. It was no
kite-flying celebration of women either. It was about desperate, often
very lonely, women seeking the healing power of a community of women.
"This circle is about witnessing the death of the old you and finding
the new you," said the leader, amid the sound of tears. "It is about
affirmation and acceptance in a group of women and about discovering
the woman within you."
Confessional was followed by lights out. The next morning, at 7.30, we
were woken by the sound of drumming, accompanied by a Native American
poem sung by staff members processing along the corridors. I caught
the last line: "Oh, mother, carry me, down to the sea."
Sacred space was being created. As we arrived for breakfast, the ranks
of staff broke into Bette Midler's The Rose, an anthem of self-love.
Most of the women wept into their muesli, myself (to my astonishment)
included. The group dynamic was working on me. During the rest of that
Saturday we joined individual workshops, witnessed by the whole group.
Anyone who nodded off, as I did, was prodded awake.
It was the group wail on the Sunday morning that made me determined to
flee. Lying on the floor in the theatre, with a staff member crouching
behind each one of us, we were invited to give a sound to the pain we
were saying goodbye to, thus making way for the new us. Silence gave
way to a single murmur. Then the deep exhalations of all the women
began, followed by one solitary, mournful yelp. The woman's yelp
turned into a primal scream, long and from the pit of her being. Then
another woman let out a high-pitched scream. And then, suddenly,
everyone was at it, screaming their heads off.
"These are healing cries," whispered a staff member who had seen me
flinch and scrunch my eyes. "I don't care," I thought. "I'm out of
here as soon as this group wail is over." I had to ask permission to
leave and there was much genuine concern about my wellbeing. I told
them that the screaming made me feel profoundly uncomfortable, that
the depth of the despair on display was intolerable. They urged me to
stay, assuring me that the rebuilding, "the ascent", was about to
come. Too late, in my view.
Two days later, I attended the Woman Within graduation ceremony, in a
hotel in Bayswater, Central London. Most of the women turned up,
looking glamorous in make-up, frocks and heels. They bounded up to
each other and hugged each other. "You look great!" said an older
woman to one of my dorm mates. "Oh, I feel it," she beamed. They then
stood up, one by one, and said thank you for the weekend. "I like
myself for the first time," said one, tearfully. "I'm not afraid,"
said another. I was the only dissenter, sitting in the audience,
declining to take part.
How, I wondered as I held the graduation rose I had been handed, would
they feel in a week, a month, a year, after they had rejoined the
outside communities over which they had no control? Would their new,
confident, trusting selves survive the rigours of the real world? Lee
Chalmers, a life coach, says that women sign up for courses such as
Woman Within willingly and because they are ready to embrace change.
Doing such self-development courses, she says, gives you another
perspective. "When you leave you've gained another choice on how to
view your life. You can go back to the way you used to see it, or
embrace the new way."
She adds that weekend courses share certain similarities with therapy:
"But they can't replace the therapeutic process. There's a support
that exists in therapy and a process that couldn't exist in a single
weekend. But you can look at the same issues. You've got to be willing
to look at your life. If you don't want to change, there is no point
in going to a course about change."
Others are more sceptical. Maurice Nissum, a consultant psychiatrist
and analyst at London's Group Analysis Practice, is particularly
worried by the speed of the process. "It sounds incredibly quick,
almost like a revivalist church," he says. "The idea is that the
person will be purged. But that is naive. Groups like this work on an
illusion of an instant cure: if you reveal all and express all your
emotions, you will be transformed. But very few people are
transformed." He argues that discovering emotional transparency can
backfire. "These groups glorify the individual, then they throw you
out into an uncertain world. You are supposed to be open about your
emotions, but you make yourself very vulnerable. If the next person
you share your insecurities with doesn't speak your touchy-feely
language, you could be left out in the cold. "
Julia Wilson, who co-ordinates Woman Within in the UK, says that it
isn't a short-term project, but a "self-development weekend, leading
to belonging to a community that offers ongoing support for women by
women".
But what alarmed me most, aside from the distress caused by being
exposed to the heartbreaking stories of more than 60 women, was the
power of the group to make people blurt, believe and emote without
rational constraint. If that's your bag, for £495 you can join a Woman
Within weekend. As you might easily be able to guess, I won't be there
with you.
[Note: This is the women's version of the equally bizarre and
dangerous cult of the Mankind Project]